Super Bowl-sized Audiences: How They Interact With Video

24 Nov , 2015

It’s true: Facebook has what marketers call a “Super Bowl-sized audience.” The only difference between the social media platform and that fateful Sunday in January is that Facebook’s audience is around, watching and attentive, every single day. Which means they’re consuming Facebook video ads with every swipe and refresh. What’s surprising about Facebook video ads is that they drive more clicks and higher clickthrough rates than YouTube ad videos do, even though Facebook is not a video-driven platform. Due to the nature of Liking, Commenting and Sharing, Facebook has overall higher user engagement rates. If you’re trying to up your levels of engagement, Facebook is the place to do it. Of course, YouTube is also a fantastic option for advertising, but it serves a different purpose than Facebook. YouTube video ads result largely in views. YouTube’s view rate is four times higher than Facebook, and ads can be targeted to specific channels within the platform. This allow marketers to have ads reach their key demographics with no problem and a 1.5x higher view rate than ads that aren’t targeted. YouTube is the place to retain your audience and help fans make purchasing decisions that lean in your favor. So, should you spend your ad dollars on Facebook or YouTube? Reebok recently put a video ad on both Facebook and YouTube to test where it would be most effective. The view rate was higher on YouTube with 23.6% of people who were served the video ultimately viewing it. Only 5.4% did the same on Facebook. Of those people, 20.4% watched the entire video on YouTube compared to 4.5% on Facebook. On the other hand, Facebook has a 0.301% engagement rate per impression, whereas YouTube has 0.163% engagement rate. We recommend balancing your budget between Facebook and YouTube to get optimal reach, views, and engagement. Where Facebook lags and YouTube excels is the ability to target your advertisements. Facebook is working to make up for this deficit by introducing two new tools that will be most beneficial to small business advertisers. The first tool will tell business owners the demographics of people in and around their physical store (yeah, it’s a little creepy), while the second tool allows businesses with multiple locations to create separate ads for each store. Combine A+ engagement rates with higher video views, and Facebook may just become the leader in online video advertising.